David Miliband makes another comeback but insists that ‘it’s not about me’

Written by David Singleton on 14 May 2018 in Diary

Diary

This time he has teamed up with Nick Clegg and Nicky Morgan.

Six weeks after friends of David Miliband advised that he might stage another comeback, the former Labour high flyer has not disappointed his remaining fans.

Miliband laid the ground for his return with a piece in the Mail on Sunday calling for a super-soft Brexit (jointly bylined with Nick Clegg and Nicky Morgan).

He then shared a platform with Clegg and Morgan as they launched as a cross-party campaign to persuade parliament to support some of the House of Lords amendments to the Brexit bill on the single market and customs union. The trio repeated their claim that Britain was being “held to ransom” by vocal Brexiters, and indicated they would be campaigning heavily for all parliamentarians to vote for amendments to the EU withdrawal bill when it returns to the Commons.

But that wasn’t all. Going head-to-head with John Humphreys on the Today programme on Monday, Miliband showed his knack for the pithy soundbite as he urged Jeremy Corbyn not to back the government’s plan to leave the single market. "The warning for Jeremy Corbyn is if he is not very careful he will be the midwife of a hard Brexit that threatens the living standards of the very people he says he wants to stand up to represent," he said.

He also denied that he wanted to set up a new political party and fended off questions about himself by telling Humphreys: "This is not about me. This is about Britain."

Alas, social media suggests that all least one Labour MP got fed up of that line about seven years ago…

"This interview is not about me, but, me me me ME!" David Miliband's first TV interview since Sept #newsnight